1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a camera control system, and to a camera control method suitable for use with a system in which information communication is performed through a network, for example, a monitoring camera system or a television conference system.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, monitoring systems employing cameras have been used in comparatively small buildings. In such monitoring systems, a certain number of cameras are operated to form images of objects to be observed and the images in accordance with analog image signals output from the cameras are displayed on a plurality of monitor screens.
A camera control system has been proposed which can connect a plurality of cameras of a monitoring system of the above-described kind to a digital network such as a local area network (LAN) or to a public digital network such as an integrated service digital network (ISDN), and which enables a larger number of cameras in remoter places to be easily connected to the monitoring center.
For use in such a camera control system, a system has also been proposed in which a personal computer or a workstation is used as a camera operating terminal to perform camera control and image display with camera operations using a graphical user interface (GUI).
Such a graphical system has the advantage of enabling even a person unfamiliar with the control system to easily execute desired control operations. In particular, the facility of control can be improved by the method of displaying on a monitor screen a control panel of a camera along with the image output from the camera.
The method of displaying a control panel of a camera along with the image output from the camera on the monitor screen, however, entails a problem of a need to reduce the size of the image from the camera so as to leave a space for display of the camera control panel, as shown in FIG. 21, or a need to display the control panel so that the control panel overlaps the displayed image.